Professional Profile

Dr. Pierre R. Berastaín is Regional Director for the Centre for Public Impact, a global organization founded by the Boston Consulting Group with a mission to transform governments so that it works for everyone. Pierre is a Co-Founder and past Chief Strategy & Operations Officer at Caminar Latino – Latinos United for Peace and Equity, a culturally specific, national organization dedicated to working with Latino families affected by domestic violence. CL-LUPE houses the National Center to Advance Peace for Children, Youth, and Families (NCAP), the federally designated resource center at the intersection of child welfare and domestic violence.

Prior to Caminar Latino, Pierre was the Chief Strategy & Operations Officer for the District Alliance for Safe Housing, the District of Columbia's largest housing provider for survivors of domestic and sexual violence. As deputy CEO, he partnered closely with the President & CEO to chart DASH's future growth and strategic response to an increasing demand for the organization's services. During Pierre's two-year tenure, DASH doubled its budget from $5.5MM to $11MM as well as significantly expanded services for survivors of domestic and sexual violence in the DMV region.

Prior to DASH, Pierre was the Director of the Office of Sexual Assault Prevention and Response (OSAPR) at Harvard University where he led and provided oversight of advocacy, education, and prevention services as well as University-wide coordination to address the needs of people who experienced interpersonal harm. Before Harvard, Pierre served as the Assistant Director of Innovation and Engagement at Esperanza United, the federally funded, Latino specific resource center for gender-based violence in the United States. During his tenure, Pierre led multi-year federal grant programs under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Justice; partook on public policy initiatives with federal agencies; oversaw strategic communications; and conducted trainings nationally and internationally on sexual assault, intimate partner violence, and stalking. He worked with federal agencies, college campuses and universities, domestic and sexual violence state coalitions, shelters, and community programs to infuse cultural competency on violence intervention and prevention initiatives.

In previous roles, Pierre worked for Renewal House, a domestic violence shelter in Roxbury, Mass as the Restorative Justice Advocate, and served as the Director of Media Relations for the Hispanic Black Gay Coalition. He co-founded the Massachusetts Restorative Justice Collaborative and served as the Co-Chair of the Massachusetts Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender (GLBT) Domestic Violence Coalition. From 2012 to 2013, Pierre was a Fellow at the Gay Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation's National People of Color Media Institute. His work has appeared in national and international publications and books, including the Huffington Post.

He is a current board member at ImmSchools, a national organization that seeks to build capacity for schools to become safer places for immigrant students. From 2015 – 2018, he served on the board of MERGE for Equality, an organization that works to engage men around violence prevention. He is one of the founders of Latinos United for Peace and Equity; and served on the Board of Directors for Transition House, a domestic violence shelter and social justice organization in Cambridge, MA. In 2019, Pierre was named Top 25 Most Influential LGBTQ People of Color in Boston.

Pierre has B.A. in Social Anthropology from Harvard College and M.Div. from Harvard Divinity School. His doctorate in public health (DrPH) is from the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of 40+ articles and contributor to several books.

Originally from Peru, Pierre immigrated to the United States with his family in 1998 and remained an undocumented immigrant for 14 years until he received DACA in 2012. He lives with his husband in Washington, DC.